


The Monsters That Wait Beneath

by ainewrites



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/F, Monsters, a darker version of holtzmann, abby and patty are the best adoptive moms one could hope for, aka the fic you all will kill me for, i'm sorry in advance, monster holtzmann, this savage song, this savage song au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 16:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11535582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainewrites/pseuds/ainewrites
Summary: Monsters, monsters, big and small...-In the city of Verity, every act of violence creates a monster.Jillian is a monster, one who desperately wants to be human. Erin is the daughter of a crime lord, unaccepted because she cannot bring herself to be monstrous. They meet by chance, but they find themselves drawn together after Erin is nearly killed by Malchai.But all monsters in the city are supposed to be controlled by Erin's father. So have these Malchai gone rogue, or has Callum Harker simply decided that he no longer has any need for his daughter?-This Savage Song/Monsters of Verity AU.





	The Monsters That Wait Beneath

**Author's Note:**

> So! Here I am, another fic, another AU. If you've read This Savage Song, the first part follows the plot of the novel somewhat closely, but after that it veers off course. If you haven't read it, you totally should. It's amazing. 
> 
> Also, the monsters, monsters, big and small nursery rhyme type thing is directly from the book: I have no claim over that. That's all Victoria Schwab in her amazing authorness.

Jillian comes into being on the cold floor of an elementary school lunch room at eleven years old. She comes into being surrounded by the sounds of sobbing children and shouting adults and the heavy, iron smell of blood. She comes into being small and confused and so, so cold…cold down to her bones, shivering so hard that her teeth chatter painfully. She comes into being surrounded by black body bags and the echoes of tragedy and death still shivering through the room.

Jillian comes into being with a name on her lips- her name? -and a deep, aching hunger.

A woman, a kind woman, rushes over as Jillian sits up, wraps a coat that smells of perfume and warmth around her shoulders. She asks Jillian’s name but Jillian can’t get her tongue to work, and the woman mistakes Jillian’s trembles, her silence, as shock and horror, not the tender newness that fills Jillian’s every corner.

The woman, however kind, has no time, because there is so much to do, so instead of staying she gives Jillian a kind smile. She’s given a juice box and a little bag of crackers, is told to sit in the corner with the other children, to wait for her parents to come. But the juice and crackers taste like ash in her mouth, and the other children are crying and Jillian doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand the raw emotions on their faces, and so when no one is looking, she shoves the snacks in the pockets of the woman’s coat and slips out the back door.

She doesn’t know how long she wanders the empty streets, Verity silent and cold, just knows that there’s an ache beneath her ribcage. And that’s when she hears it: soft and lovely and gentle, the barest hints of music on the barest hints of a breeze. Something in Jillian is pulled closer, closer, until she finds the man, dressed in rags and sitting against the wall of an alley, turning a violin over in his hands.

“How could someone throw this away?” he says, and it takes Jillian a moment to realize that he’s talking to her. She shrugs, watching as he carefully runs his hands over the instrument. She shoves her own hands into her pockets, the package of crackers rustling. She hands them to the man, and they apparently taste better to him, because he eats them like he hasn’t seen food in forever. And he probably hasn’t.

“May I see it?” She asks, and her voice is strange in her head, the clear, high tones of a child. Her fingertips itch to hold the violin, and the man looks up at her. “You play?”

She shrugs, again. He seems to take that as a yes, and hands it over. She holds it carefully. It’s heavier than she expected, the smooth finish a bit smudged in some parts, but it’s the most beautiful thing she has seen in her short, new life. She lifts it up, tucks it under her chin on some instinct she doesn’t understand. She raises the bow and closes her eyes.

And there’s _music_. It flows from her arms into her fingers and out from the violin, haunting and lovely, and something inside Jillian snaps into place.

She doesn’t really remember what happens next, and she doesn’t understand until later what happened. She only knows that Abby finds her, seconds or minutes or hours later, slumped against the wall, the corpse of the man next to her; jaw slack and eyes a smudge of black, the violin cradled like a precious thing in her lap.

-

Erin’s life snaps out of place at eleven years old. Her life snaps out of place in the front seat of the sleek silver car, a book in her lap and her mother at the wheel. Her life snaps out of place with a tape of Beethoven playing in the ancient cassette player and a loaded gun in the backseat. Her life snaps out of place on a bridge in the darkest hours of the night, almost gone. Almost safe.

Erin’s life snaps out of place with headlights coming out of nowhere and the crunch of metal on metal, and the explosion of pain.

It comes in flashes after the initial impact.

Her mother, yanking the wheel hard as the car spins, trying to regain control.

Glass, exploding; the windshield, the passenger window, the driver window.

The pain, across her forehead and her arms and her ribs, as she dangles upside down, the only thing holding her in her seat is the strap of rough fabric across her chest that used to be her seatbelt.

And, finally, crawling. Crawling across the glass that glints in the moonlight, sinister and beautiful, as blood drips into her eyes and into her mouth. Reaching for the limp body of her mother, head tilted at a sharp angle and eyes half-open and _empty_ , sobbing because she _knows_ and yet she doesn’t want to know.

She fights the paramedics that come, even though every movement hurts. She fights the straps of the gurney, screaming for her mother. She fights the sedative that they try to pump into her veins, somehow managing to rip out the first IV before they slide into another, holding her down. She screams for her mother the entire time, until her voice is raw and her throat hurts as much as the rest of her body.

She wakes up in a pristine white hospital room, in starchy sheets and her arms bandaged and a headache throbbing behind her temples. There are flowers in a vase next to her bed; tulips. She likes lilies.

The flowers are bright yellow and cheerful, and she feels a surge of irrational anger, because she doesn’t want cheerful. She’s eleven years old and alone in a hospital room, still in Verity, still under her father’s domain, the name Harker on the bracelet around her wrist.

It takes every ounce of energy, but she smashes the vase against the floor. The pink and vase shatters, sending shards spinning across the floor. The tulips lie in the puddle of water on the floor, and Erin is reminded of the pools of blood.

And she cries.

-

 _Hell is empty, and all the devils are here_.

-William Shakespeare.

-

Jillian Holtzmann is seventeen years old, and sitting at the kitchen table. There’s the raw throb of hunger deep in her gut, but she ignores it. Abby is in the kitchen, stirring something in a pot on the stove. It smells delicious; like cinnamon and apples and cream, but Jillian knows that if she were to eat it, it would be as if she put a piece of charcoal in her mouth.

Her violin case rests against her leg, and she curls her hands around the half-finished mug of coffee in front of her. Coffee doesn’t taste any better than she knows the oatmeal will, but while she might not be human, her body reacts to caffeine the same way a human does, so she still drinks it.

“Dr. Gorin requested to see you,” Abby says without turning around.

There’s a little chip on the otherwise smooth blue ceramic of the mug, and Jillian scraps her thumbnail against the out of place roughness. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to go, you know.”

“I do.” Jillian takes a long sip of coffee, grimacing at the flavor, like white noise against her tongue. No amount of sugar or cream would ever make it taste good to her, so she drinks it black. Those that don’t know what she is thinks she does it to look cool. Those who know what she is like to pretend that she does it to look cool, even though they know better.

Abby abandons her pot of sauce and comes to sit down at the table across from Jillian. Despite being one of Jillian’s two legal guardians, she’s only about ten years older than Jillian appears. But no one would mistake them for mother and daughter, anyways; the only thing they share in appearance is a short stature. But Abby’s all dark hair and curves and green eyes, while Jillian is blonde and angles and sharp lines and blue eyes.

“Jillian,” Abby tries, but Jillian drains the last of her coffee and gets up to put the mug in the sink.

“I need to, Abby,” Jillian says. “I agreed to this.” She pulls her violin case over her shoulder until it settles against her back, heavy and familiar. Her guardian watches in concern, before sighing and relenting.

“Okay,” she says, “Have a good day at school.”

Jillian doesn’t answer, just closes the door gently behind her.

She’s so hungry, but she grits her teeth and shoves the sensation down, down, down.

-

Erin Gilbert is nineteen and so, so tired. She’s tired of the stares she gets for just walking across campus; everything from curiosity to gawking to straight-up glaring. She’s tired of the comments behind her back, of the whispers that follow her everywhere. She’s tired of the overly harsh teachers and of the teachers that always give her perfect grades because they’re afraid. Afraid, no of her, but of her father, and her father’s monsters.

Erin is tired of monsters, tired of the name Harker, tired of _Verity_.

But the scar that slices across her forehead, the smaller ones that sprinkle her arms, old and faded, are reminders of what happen to those who try to leave. No Verity, no; those that try to leave Verity find themselves in the Waste or in another city or torn apart by monsters in the darkest corners of the night. No, her scars tell a tale of those who try to leave Callum Harker, who tries to take his property away from him.

No one is immune. Not even his own wife.

So Erin remains in V-City with the symbol of Harker’s protection around her neck and the name all but branded on her back. She works. She goes to school. She goes to the empty penthouse that smells of her father’s cigarettes and tries to pretend that there’s not an army of monsters four, five, six floors below.

Erin slips into the lecture hall a few minutes early, lets herself sink into the warm, stuffy air that smells of whiteboard markers and scratch paper. She sits down, the uncomfortable, ancient wooden seats digging into her back and the backs of her thighs. She pulls the little desk up over her lap, but doesn’t open her laptop yet, instead taking a long sip of her now-cold tea.

The room isn’t empty; there are a few other early students littering the rows. Two boys against the left wall, the older woman in the front row, and the tiny girl two rows and directly in front of Erin, her blonde hair in its usual wild style. They share several other classes, too; they’re in the same physics class and the same math class, and Erin knows she’s intelligent and younger than the average college student, but she doesn’t know her name.

And, as if the girl knew that Erin was thinking about her, turned around. Her eyes meet Erin’s, and after a second, a smile spreads across her face.

“You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders,” the girl says, looping her arm across the back of the chair and resting her chin down on it. Erin blinks, startled.

“Oh,” she says, somewhat unsure of what to say. The girl, with quick, fluid movements, gathers her things and climbs over the backs of the chairs, plopping down in the seat next to Erin. She holds out a hand. “I’m Jillian. Holtzmann. Jillian Holtzmann.”

Erin shakes the offered hand. “I’m…”

“Erin Harker,” the girl- Jillian -says, rolling the name in her mouth.

“Gilbert.”

“What?”

“Erin Gilbert,” Erin says. It’s a rebellion, an admittedly small one, but it feels good to use her mother’s name instead of her father’s. To her professors, to her father’s men and to the monsters that wait in the darkness, she’s Erin Harker. The daughter of the most feared, the most powerful man in Verity. But to the bookstore and her (non-existent) friends, she’s Erin Gilbert.

She likes being her mother’s daughter more than she likes being her father’s. But it’s her father’s daughter that others see when they look at her.

Jillian tilts her head, and there’s something odd about her eyes, about the expression on her face. It’s a little too still, as if she’s wearing a mask of an expression instead of the expression itself. As she shifts, a sleeve of her green sweater rides up on her wrist a little, and Erin sees a black smudge. Jillian, noticing Erin’s gaze, pulls the sweater sleeve back down. There’s a challenge in her eyes, daring Erin to ask, but Erin doesn’t.

Jillian stretches out in her chair, watching as students slowly start trickling into the lecture hall. The two of them sit in silence for a moment, before the girl returns her attention to Erin sitting beside her.

“Tell me, Erin Gilbert,” Jillian says, leaning forward so slightly. “You are the daughter of Callum Harker. You literally have the V-City at your fingertips. So why are you sitting in the world’s most boring history class on the tiniest college campus in Verity?”

It’s a loaded question, and it’s clearly intended to be one, and Erin’s first instinct to lie. She is a Harker, after all, even if she wishes she wasn’t. But, instead, she tells the truth.

“Because it’s mine,” she says. “And my father can’t take it from me.”

Jillian nods, slowly, bobbing her head up, down.

They are silent for the rest of the time before the professor shows up in class, and after the lecture, Jillian gives Erin the barest hints of a smile before slipping away into the crowd.

-

The underground is Jillian’s least favorite way to travel. Too many people, trapped in too small of a space, enough to steal the breath from her lungs. And her being here doesn’t help at all. Patty calls it her influence, a nice word for a not-nice thing, but whenever people spent too long in an enclosed space around her, truths tend to start spilling from their lips.

A woman in the corner is babbling, admitting that when she was a teenager she used to shoplift from the tiny story on the corner, even though she always had enough money. A man is crying as he admits to leaving his pregnant girlfriend because he did not want a baby. Two teenagers are arguing in the corner; one just announced that they were cheating. All because of Jillian, tucked as far in the corner as she can get. She closes her eyes, concentrates on the sway of the train beneath her feet, the cool metal of the pole under her hand, the weight of her violin against her back.

But there’s also the gnawing hunger deep inside. Not from her stomach, like with a human, but from the space behind her ribcage, deep within her chest. It’s been three days since she’s last eaten, and now if she moves too quickly, turns to fast, the floor dips and her stomach drops. Her hands tremble almost constantly, everything from tiny tremors to full-on shaking. So she opens her eyes, takes a deep breath, tries to ignore the sensations, because she does not want to eat any more than she has to.

There is a mother in the corner, standing and holding hands with a little girl. The little girl meets Jillian’s eyes and smiles a toothy smile. Jillian smiles back; doesn’t have to force her face into the expression she wants for a rare change. Children are rare, both in the Flynn compound and in the South City in general; it’s dangerous, and most do not want to bring children into a world full of monsters.

The girl is clearly bored, and soon tires of smiling at Jillian. So instead she kicks the toe of her shoe against the floor, and after a mischievous glance at her mother, begins to sing.

“ _Monsters, monsters, big and small_ ,” she sings, “ _they’re gonna come and eat you all_!”

Jillian winces, goosebumps rising on her arms.

“ _Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw_

_Shadow and bone will eat you raw!_

_Malchai, Malchai, sharp and sly_

_Smile and bite and drink you dry_!”

A pit forms in Jillian’s stomach, and she looks away from the girl, knowing what’s coming next.

“ _Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal_

 _Sing you a song and steal your soul_!”

Jillian gets off on the next stop, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been so glad to be off the subway.

-

The compound doesn’t look like a compound. It’s not sleek and shining and metal like Harker’s tower, nor is it all cement and barbed wire like books tend to depict compounds as. It’s simply a building, one that houses trained soldiers and has a basement of holding cells and weapon cages, one that has a security camera in every hallway. Jillian always takes care to keep her gaze lowered, even though everyone knows what she is. But she doesn’t like to broadcast her otherness, her lack of _humanness_ any more than she must.

Dr. Gorin is waiting for her, arms crossed. “Jillian,” she greets coolly, and Jillian nods, once. The woman turns and heads down the hallway without another word, and Jillian follows her. She tries not to think of Abby and Patty upstairs, of the cozy air of the apartment and her cluttered, comfortable room.

Her skin feels too tight, her bones heating up within her. She is so hungry. But she can last longer.

She can last longer.

Dr. Gorin turns a corner before stopping so suddenly Jillian nearly plows into her. She stops herself just in time, stumbling as she does, and Dr. Gorin raises an eyebrow. Just that one, simple movement makes Jillian feel small, so she tucks her hands into the pockets of her overalls and lowers her head.

“We have caught on of Harker’s men,” Dr. Gorin says, and Jillian peers around her to see the door of one of the interrogation rooms. “There is no need for your…appetite, yet, but it would be helpful for you to be the one asking questions.”

She holds out a hand, and Jillian shrugs the violin case off her shoulder, passing it carefully to the woman. She opens the door and takes a breath before entering.

The man is shackled to the table, and there’s blood crusted around his nose and on his lip. There’s a purple and green bruise on his jaw, clearly new, and a cut along his cheekbone. Still, even though Jillian is the one in the position of power, he leers at her, dragging his gaze up and down her body. She tries not to show how her skin crawls at the look, but can’t help but wrap her arms over her chest as she sits down.

She knows the drill. She’s done this many times before.

“Why are you in South City?”

Everyone knows. The Flynn’s have control of the South City. Harker the North. The fact that Harker is sending more and more of his men over to the South City is annoying at best, extremely concerning at worst.

The man spits, and Jillian wrinkles her nose at the sound of it hitting the floor.

“Hunting monsters,” he drawls, leaning back in his chair. Around his neck dangles an iron chain, and though it vanishes under his shirt, Jillian knows what is at the other end of it. Harker’s symbol. Safety. Or, at least, safety from Harker’s own monsters. There are still ones not under Harker’s employ, but all the monsters of the city know as well as the humans do; if you’re not Harker’s, you’re dead.

Jillian waits. It’s all she has to do.

And the man talks, eventually. They all do.

He talks about him and four others being sent over into the city, and about how they’re going after a new batch of Corsai lurking in the subway system, but they’re also supposed to be gathering intel on getting into the South City. It’s the typical answer. It always is. Because those that are gathering intel tend to find themselves in the compound’s holding cells, where they’re then left to the mercy of Garret, of Jennifer.

Of Jillian.

There’s a soft knock on the two-way mirror at Jillian’s back, Dr. Gorin’s signal that they have what they need, and Jillian gets up. She sleeps into the other little room, looking through the brown-tinted glass at the man in the other room. Dr. Gorin gives Jillian her violin case back, and Jillian breathes a sigh of relief. It’s like she’s been missing a body piece, and now it’s back with her.

“Decent work,” Dr. Gorin says, and Jillian knows that’s all the praise she’s going to get. So instead of lingering and hoping for more, she slings her violin into it’s place at her back. As she leaves the room, she glances at one of the screens. On it is her face, frozen.

Her eyes are not the clear shade of blue that they currently appear as.

Instead, in their place is just a streak of black.

-

The penthouse is cold. It’s always cold, but Erin still somehow hopes that it won’t be when she gets home. Or what used to be home. It hasn’t felt like home since that night years ago, since Erin came home alone and Alice Gilbert-Harker went to the cemetery. She slips off her shoes by the door and pads across the tile floors. Her father isn’t home, but that’s not unusual. She drops her backpack in a chair and opens the fridge. She’s not hungry, not really, but a few days ago she had hidden a bar of her favorite dark chocolate in the back, and it’s been a long day.

“Good afternoon, Miss Harker.”

The voice, smooth and cold, makes Erin jump. She spins, chocolate clutched in her hands, and finds Phil leaning against the countertop. Just the sight of the Malchai makes her skin crawl; deceptively normal in appearance, but there’s something _other_ about him. The pale hue of his skin, the strange gleam of his eyes, the pointed sharpness of his teeth.

“Phil,” she says in return, tilting her chin up in an attempt to hide her instinctual fear. He smiles an oily smile.

“Have a good day at school?” He moves closer, close enough that Erin has to force herself not to step back. He’s toying with her, she knows. She also knows he would do nothing to harm her; her father controls him, after all. But still…she hates Phil, and her stomach cramps up every time she sees him.

“Well enough,” she replies as coldly as she can, ducking out of his way and heading toward her bedroom. He follows her, gliding smoothly down the hallway. She’s in her room and almost managed to shut her door before a tablet appears in his hands.

“As you requested,” he says, and Erin has to grit her teeth to prevent herself from snatching it out of his hands and slamming the door in her face. Instead, she takes it calmly, and closes the door as calmly as she can. Her heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of her chest.

She slides her finger across the tablet screen, unlocking it, and pulls up what she wants to see. She sorts through the files until her fingers hover above the one she wants.

Monsters: Birth Of.

She knows in theory how they’re created. Everyone does. Acts of violence. Corsai, the creatures of shadow and teeth and claws, born of non-fatal acts of violence. Malchai, like Phil, the ones like vampires of the stories that feed on blood and life, born of fatal acts. And Sunai…the soul-eaters. The mysteries. Normal in appearance, unless you were to capture one on camera. Born of the most grievous acts, the most terrible, the most brutal. Shootings, mass suicides, acts of terrorism.

Erin doesn’t want to watch the videos, not really. But while she knows the monsters, she doesn’t _know_ them.

So she taps the file labeled Birth Of: Corsai.

The film is taken from a security camera, and on it, two men are engaged in a shouting match. There are two cars; one’s hood dented and smoke coming from under it, the other with a bent bumper. Though there are no words, Erin can tell when the argument gets fiercer, and soon, the two men are in a fistfight. She forces herself to watch, even as the blows get heavier, even as one man falls and the other kicks him, over and over. The winner storms away, leaving the other, bleeding and in pain on the pavement.

And there’s _something_ coming into being in the shadows of the alley behind him. At first, it just looks like a thicker clump of shadows, but it gets darker, swirling and forming until it’s a shapeless form darker than the shadows themselves, eyes and teeth and claws glowing white.

The man has dragged himself upright, towards his car, but he’s moving slowly, leaving streaks of blood along the pavement, and Erin knows what’s going to happen. He never stood a chance.

The Corsai _pounces_ , and Erin looks away.

Soon, all that’s left of the man is a streak of blood and matter along the stone pavement.

Erin shuts off the tablet, sick to her stomach. And she wishes, not for the first time, that Alice and eleven-year-old Erin got out of the city, out of Verity, and away from the monsters.

-

Patty is waiting for Jillian when she drags herself into the apartment. The woman scowls as Jillian kicks off her boots and drops her backpack next to the door. She lays the palm of her hand against Jillian’s temple before she can duck away, and her scowl turns into concern.

“Jilly, you’re burning up!”

Jillian’s too hot to say anything about the despised nickname. It feels like her blood is boiling in her veins, and there’s been a headache throbbing behind her eyes for the last hour.

“I’m fine,” she lies, even as she shrugs off her overall straps and strips her green, long-sleeved crop top from her body.

Patty follows her toward the kitchen. “When was the last time you ate?”

Jillian knows the truth, but doesn’t want to say it. She instead stares at her second guardian, a challenge in her face.

Abby chooses this moment to come into the room, and stops. She takes in Jillian, overalls dangling from her hips and in only a sports bra, staring at Patty, who’s looking at the blonde in concern, and sighs.

“Jillian, when was the last time you ate?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does, idiot!” Abby says at the same time Patty says, “Baby…”

Jillian just shakes her head. As much as she loves her adoptive moms, she doesn’t want their concern. She doesn’t want to eat.

She wants to be human. But that’s impossible, so instead she chooses to take an ice-cold shower in an attempt to sooth the raging heat under her skin. But when she comes out, Garret’s waiting for her, Abby and Patty peering around the corner.

Jillian scowls. “Really?”

“Sorry, baby,” Patty says, “But y’all aren’t looking too good.”

Garret’s face is expressionless as he looks Jillian up and down. Like Jillian, neither him nor Jennifer came into being with the full range of expressions of a human. It’s something Jillian has taken care to learn, taken care to emulate. Garret, however, has never cared.

“We found a sinner,” he says, “Get dressed.”

“But- “

“We’re going, Jillian,” her brother snaps.

So Jillian does.

-

She stands outside the apartment, her violin already in her hands. Garret is waiting down the hall, looking on in disinterest. Jillian doesn’t want to do this, but at the same time…it’s been four days. Almost five, now. She’s so hungry.

The skin of her arms is bare, the sleeves of her button-up shirt rolled up, and both her arms are circled with tally marks. Four hundred and sixty-two of them. She knows the exact number, tracks it like her life depends on it. And, in a way, it does.

Jillian raises a fist and knocks.

A man opens it, clearly having been asleep, bleary-eyed and rumpled.

“May I come in?” Jillian asks politely.

The man gasps and scrambles backwards, knocking over a stack of cat food tins. He knows. They always know, somehow. Jillian wishes they didn’t. She really does. But with a glance toward Garret, she raises her violin and follows.

He tears through the apartment in a haste, but that won’t do anything. Jillian finds him in his bedroom, already talking.

“…I was only in my twenties, I didn’t _mean_ to…It’s just, the gun was _right there_ and I was so angry. I was only trying to scare her a little bit, but…”

Jillian raises her violin, tucks it under her chin. She readies her bow, and the man, crying now, looks her right in the eyes.

“I pulled the trigger. And I felt it recoil in my hands, and suddenly she’s bleeding out on my carpet. And I didn’t know what to do, so I got rid of her body and bleached my entire apartment and buried the gun. No one knew. They all thought we broke up. No one knew I killed her.”

And Jillian _plays_. The music flows through her, beautiful and haunting and soulful, and the man relaxes, jaw slackening, eyes glazing over. There’s a light flickering under his skin; blood red and coiling like mist.

His soul; no longer white and pure, but red and tainted.

A sinner’s soul.

A killer’s soul.

Jillian lowers her violin, but the traces of music hang in the air. She places a hand on the bare skin of the man’s arm, and his soul rises up, through his skin. The man exhales, softer than a sigh, and Jillian breathes it in.

The soul fills her; not in the way a human would feel full after a meal. No, the soul fills her in other ways. Because, for the briefest of moments, Jillian feels _real_ , solid.

For the briefest of moments, Jillian feels _human_.

But then, the man’s body hits the floor, eyes open and empty, and Jillian is standing alone in an empty apartment with a corpse. Because she’s not human.

She’s a Sunai, wearing a human disguise. But she’ll never, ever be more than a monster.

Sunai’s don’t cry. Garret thinks it’s because it’s too weak of a reaction to ever be given to a monster. Jennifer thinks it’s because it’s too human. And Jillian?

Jillian just thinks that if she was human, she’d be crying. But instead, she carefully tucks her violin back into its case and returns in the direction she came.

A soft meow stops her in her tracks. She turns. There’s a cat, sitting beside the front door, fluffy gray tail tucked over small white paws, staring up at Jillian with the largest amber eyes Jillian has ever seen.

“Go, shoo,” she says gently, but the cat meows again and stalks toward her. Jillian freezes; animals typically hate monsters. Dogs will growl as she passes, cats with hiss and run, birds will scatter from her path. But instead this cat curls around her legs, purring, rubbing a head roughly against her pants. Jillian crouches down, offering a hand.

“Hello, handsome,” she says, scratching the cat behind the ear. The cat purrs louder. Jillian looks around the apartment, at the cans of cat food, back down at the cat, and sighs. She scoops the purring cat up in her arms and marches out the door.

Garret looks down at the cat in her arms, back up at Jillian, then down at the cat.

“Don’t say anything,” Jillian snaps before he as a chance to. “This is…” she fumbles with the tag on the cat’s collar. “Hemmingway, and he is my son.”

Garret rolls his eyes. Jillian takes it as a victory; both the fact that he doesn’t say anything, and the fact that the eye roll is the most human reaction he’s given in weeks.

-

The sun feels good on Erin’s shoulders, but there’s still a little cold pocket somewhere inside Erin’s chest. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t forget the video of the Corsai “birth”. She has a free hour between classes, and she’s intending to be studying, but instead she just drags the tip of her pencil in circles across her paper.

“Hey, is this seat taken?”

Erin looks up. Jillian stands over her. She’s wearing the most eccentric collection of clothing Erin has ever seen: a maroon velvet smoking jacket, gray tee, striped baggy pants that end mid-calve, and mismatched socks tucked into unlaced combat books. Her hair is in its usual wild style, and there are a pair of sunglasses with yellow lenses dangling off her ear. It’s odd, but endearing, as is the crooked smile she offers Erin. So Erin nods, and Jillian settles down into the grass beside her.

“Watcha doing?” She asks, leaning over to look at Erin’s paper.

“Trying to do homework,” Erin says, and flops backwards into the grass. It tickles against the back of her neck.

“Only trying, huh?” Jillian says, leaning back onto her elbows. “I get that.”

Erin turns to look at her, and as she does, she notices that the sleeve of Jillian’s jacket as ridden up, over her wrist. Circling it is many, many little black lines of ink.

Erin reaches out, touches the skin gently. “What are these?” She asks.

Jillian yanks her hand away from Erin’s touch, and Erin stammers out an apology, but Jillian shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Sorry…I’m just…I’m not used to physical contact.”

Erin’s brow furrows, but Jillian keeps talking.

“I have one for every day.”

“Every day?” Erin asks, “Every day…clean? Sober? Alive?”

“Sure.”

Erin notices that she agrees, but doesn’t specifically say which one it is. Which is fine. It’s a personal question, after all.

Jillian rolls over onto her side, studying Erin. “So, tell me Gilbert, what brings you to this fine college? What does the daughter of a crime boss want with us?”

It’s jarring, to hear Callum Harker referred to so flippantly as a crime boss. He is, of course, but considering pretty much everyone in the North City is under his protection, no one dares to speak badly of him. Even Erin, who everyone recognizes, wears on of the pendants around her neck just in case; the Harker symbol telling any monster who might stalk her down a dark alley that she’s under his protection, and that should the monster lay a claw on her, it will find itself dead sooner rather than later. But at the same time, it’s a breath of fresh air.

“I want to be a physicist,” she admits, fiddling with the zipper on her hoodie. “I have since I was a little girl. I want to know how the universe works.”

Jillian whistles, low. “That’s a lofty goal, there.”

“Well, I’ve always been good with numbers and math, and I find it fascinating.”

“Hey, I’m not judging,” Jillian says. “I want to be a nuclear engineer. It’s not going to happen, but it’s what I want to be.”

“Why is it not going to happen?”

Jillian shrugs. “For a lot of reasons. Mostly relating to the family business.”

She doesn’t elaborate as to what that is, but Erin doesn’t pry. She has secrets of her own, too.

They talk for the rest of the hour, and Erin finds Jillian fascinating. She’s intelligent, extremely so, and Erin wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she has the IQ of a genius. Erin finds out that she’s adopted and that she recently got a cat, but mostly they talk science. And it’s refreshing, to talk about something Erin loves. The only two people she talks to on a regular basis is her father, and Phil. She doesn’t want to talk to Phil any more than necessary, and her father…well, her father can’t even be bothered to feign interest.

Jillian offers to talk Erin to her next class, with Erin excepts, and for the first time in a long time, Erin’s relaxed, and maybe even having fun. Because Jillian is smart and charming and, yes, kind of cute, and Erin feels like there’s a tension she didn’t even know she was holding melting away.

Then, a group of kids walk past, filing something on there phones. And Jillian hastily turns away, hair flopping over her face. And that part wouldn’t be so odd; Erin understands not wanting to be on camera. But it’s the way she does it, and something hits Erin in the gut. Because Jillian purposely kept her _eyes_ away from the camera. Not her face. Her _eyes_. The way she titled her head and the way her hair moved, it was all about her eyes.

It takes all of Erin’s concentration to pretend she didn’t see anything. But she knows she did, and chills run down her skin.

-

The first thing Erin does when she gets home is go to find Phil. It’s the last thing she _wants_ to do, but her father is down in the basement holding court over his army of monsters and men, both as vicious as the other, and she has no interest in witnessing the things that happen below the penthouse floors.

Phil is in the kitchen when she finds him. He smiles lecherously at her, and Erin’s skin crawls. But she slides onto a stool on the other side of the kitchen island and meets his eyes.

“What do you know about Sunai?”

“Interesting question, Miss Harker,” he says, leaning against the counter on his side. “Any particular reason why you’re asking?”

Erin just stares at him, and tries not to show how much his odd, not-quite-human eyes unsettle her.

“I know that there are three,” Phil says, blinking slowly. “Garret Flynn. The oldest. I had the pleasure of meeting him, years ago, and…well…” Phil pulls down the neck of his shirt, exposing long, pale scars. “There is a second. Also a Flynn, although I do not know their name. The most powerful of the three. It is this one that is responsible for creating the Barren.”

The Barren. An entire block of Verity; one day there, the next, just gone. Reduced to piles of rubble and still-burning embers, every bit of life extinguished. And there is a person, a _thing_ out there with the power to do that, and there’s every possibility that that thing could do it again.

“And the third?” She asks, and Phil’s smile is as cold as ever.

“Unknown,” he says, simply, and that is the end of the conversation.

When Erin goes back to her room, the first thing she does is unearth the tablet from her dresser drawer. She searches through it until she finds what she’s looking for.

A file marked SUNAI: GARRET FLYNN.

There are only two things in the file. The first, a video. In it, a young man is in a room with a trembling woman. There’s no sound, but Erin watches as the man raises a flute to his lips. The woman stops trembling, goes slack-jawed and wide-eyed as Garret plays. There’s something happening, a strange fuzziness around her, and then Garret leans forward. The woman collapses against the table, and Erin knows from her stillness that she’s dead.

The other thing in the file is a picture. It’s not the best quality, clearly snapped quickly from a cell phone, but it’s very obvious what it is of. Garret, on the sidewalk, surrounded by people, humans, staring at the person taking the photo.

While the rest of his body appears normal, innocent, even, his eyes…well, where his eyes should have been there’s only a smudge of blackness, as if someone had swiped paint across the image.

Erin chews on the edge of her thumbnail, letting the tablet fall to her bedspread with a soft _plop_. There’s no way _Jillian_ , tiny, sweet Jillian, could be a Sunai, a _monster_. Right?

But Erin keeps remembering the way she hid her eyes from the camera, remembers the blackness across Garret’s eyes in the photo, and she can’t stop wondering.

-

Abby’s allergic to cats, Jillian knows this, so as much as she has decided that she’s fallen in love with Hemmingway, she can’t take him home. She tried, yes, but when Abby found out she yelled at Jillian for a good hour. So she takes him to her sister.

Jennifer hums, softly, taking the cat gently from Jillian’s arms. She lifts him up until they’re eye to eye, and they stare at each other for several long seconds. Finally, the cat meows and bats a paw against Jennifer’s nose, and Jillian relaxes. This will work out fine.

“He’s quite soft,” Jennifer says, tucking the cat in her arms like a baby. Hemmingway is purring loud enough for Jillian to hear, from where she leans against the wall. Jillian watches as her sister gently sets the cat down on her bed, taping her fingers against the bedspread to get him to play.

Jennifer Flynn…as Sunai as Jillian, but somehow more human, too. She is the only one of their trio that needs no instrument to sing to souls; instead, she uses her voice. When it is time for them to reap the souls of the sinners, the ones whose acts have created the monsters that plague Verity, Jennifer gets the ones who wishes they had not done what they had done. She takes their souls with her lovely voice and gentle hands, and Jillian knows that if Sunai have souls, Jennifer’s would be a kind one.

Garret, from his place in the doorway, scoffs. Jillian whips around her head to glare. Garret, on the other hand, is not gentle or lovely or kind. He takes the souls of those who enjoyed every moment they caused pain, and Jillian knows that he savors each one.

And Jillian? Well…Jillian gets the rest.

She follows Garret back out into the hallway, and Garret turns to look at her.

“You’re getting too soft, Jillian.”

“I do my job,” Jillian shoots back. “So what if I bring a cat or two back with me?”

Garret looks down his nose at her. “It may not seem like it to you, Jillian, but we’re at war. With the monsters, with Harker, with the sinners that create the things he employs. You cannot have room for softness. What if your violin breaks?”

Jillian hesitates. It’s something she’s thought about before, sure. Her violin, already years old, breaking on the job one day, leaving her with nothing. She could try singing, like Jennifer, but she doesn’t think it would work. Their instruments are as much a part of them as any of their limbs, and Garret knows that as well as she.

Garret presses the button for the elevator. “I’ll show you what you have to do.”

Jillian is silent for the elevator ride, is silent for the walk through the basement halls, until Garret stands outside one of the holding cells. It’s the man from earlier, the one she interrogated the day before, while Dr. Gorin watched. He looks up as Garret and Jillian stand outside his cell, and grins.

“Well, well, well,” He drawls. “Flynn does have the Sunai in his pocket after all.”

Jillian stiffens, but Garret calmly slides open the door to the cell. He steps inside, gesturing for Jillian to follow him.

“You see, Jillian,” Garret says, standing over the shackled man, “There’s more than one way to steal a soul.”

He takes the man’s arm. And with a sharp, brutal twist, snaps the bone. Jillian yelps at the crunch of bone, but it’s drowned under the man’s scream of pain. There’s a flicker of red across his skin, the hint of a sinner’s soul.

But Garret doesn’t stop. He keeps going. Bone by bone. Limb by limb. Until the man is a sobbing, bloody mess under him. And it’s then, it’s finally than that he takes the soul.

Jillian is shaking. She’s sick to her stomach and horrified and shaking, but all Garret does is calmly step over the body, like it’s no more than a pile of laundry, and smiles at Jillian. It’s a predator’s smile, all teeth and no warmth, no humor.

“You see, little sister?” he says, and Jillian realizes, for the first time, that Garret is the most monstrous of the three.

-

Jillian finds Erin on the grass outside the science building, just as Erin had hoped. She’s dressed just as eccentrically today, in a tee tucked into dress pants and bowling shoes, and she grins as she plops down next to Erin.

Erin hands her one of the two iced coffees that she had stopped to get. It might be her imagination, searching for any reason to believe that her theory about Jillian- about what Jillian is -to be true, but her expression seems to freeze for a second before she takes the plastic cup.

“Thanks,” she says, and takes a sip. The tiniest of grimaces crosses her face.

“So,” Erin says, desperate for a topic of conversation. “How was class?”

They talk about school for a while, but eventually, the topic moves to families. Jillian chews on the straw of her cup as she talks.

“Yeah, Abby and Patty are great,” she says, leaning back. “Everything I could have wanted.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“Yeah, I have a brother and a sister.”

“Oh.” Erin had asked the question with a purpose, because monsters don’t have siblings.

Jillian grins, straw clamped firmly in her teeth. “You sound disappointed.”

“No,” Erin hurriedly says, “It’s just…” she can’t think of anything else to say, so she just coughs uncomfortably. Jillian laughs.

“What about you, Gilbert-not-Harker? How’s your family?”

Erin winces. “Well…my mom…she died when I was eleven. Car accident. It’s how I got this.” Her hand comes up to her scar, and Jillian goes quiet. “So it’s been just my father and I for a while. And it’s been…well…hard.”

“Oh, really?” Jillian says drily. “I wouldn’t have thought.” When Erin looks up, Jillian winks, grinning, to show she’s kidding, and there’s a strange, small flutter in Erin’s belly. She frowns, hand coming down to press into the soft skin of her stomach, as if to push the unfamiliar sensation away.

Meanwhile, Jillian stretches and glances down at her watch. “I have class in fifteen minutes, so I should probably get going. I’ll see you in math.”

She grins at Erin again, popping up, and as she goes, Erin fumbles for her phone. She doesn’t think she is, really hopes she’s not, but Erin would kick herself if she didn’t get the final, solid yes or no answer.

She takes the picture, and, holding her breath, opens it.

You can barely see Jillian’s eyes, barely even a glance of them…and where they are, there’s only a black blur.

Erin’s stomach drops, hitting the pavement. A monster. Jillian is a monster, and not only that, she’s a Sunai. The most feared, the most powerful.

She has to tell someone. She has to tell her father.

Erin shoves everything into her bag, frantically, fumbling with her phone as she takes off toward the parking lot and her car. She has her father’s number dialed, is just about to hit call, when two figures appear in front of her.

Tall. Pale. Dead-eyed and smiling cruel, sharp smiles. Malchai. Erin’s heart jumps, stutters, and but then she notices the Harker symbol on the side of their necks. They’re her father’s monsters. Dangerous, yes, but not to her. She digs in the front of her shirt for her necklace and the protection is gives, but the monster on the left smiles.

“No piece of metal will save you, Harker,” it snarls, voice grating like sandpaper through Erin’s ears. “Iron or not.”

And they pounce, both reaching hands with long, bony fingers toward Erin.

And Erin screams.

-

Jillian hears Erin scream from across campus, and she takes off running. She flies through campus, suddenly grateful for her inhuman endurance, and rounds the corner to see a horrifying, and unexpected, sight.

Erin, pinned to the ground under the weight of two Malchai. She’s got her head tucked to her chest to try and protect her neck, arms crossed to try and protect her heart, but they’re both snarling, rabid animals and Jillian knows they’re desperate for the blood that courses through Erin’s veins, and they probably won’t wait for their two prime targets to be exposed.

Jillian acts on instinct. She’s never tried to reap a monster’s soul before, but her violin is in her hands in the barest of seconds, and she _plays_.

All three writhing, twisting bodies on the pavement go stock still, and three souls slowly appear, hovering above skin, barely clinging to the bodies they came from. One, shining and white. Erin’s soul, untainted, perfect. The other two, roiling and black and gleaming like oil. Malchai’s souls. Monster’s souls. Jillian reaches for them, desperate to get the monsters away from Erin.

They taste like rotten eggs and curdle like sour milk in her stomach. Erin sits up, the wisps of her soul fading back into her body. She’s wide-eyed and panting, expression wild with fear and adrenaline.

Jillian staggers off into the bushes and vomits. The thick, black slime burns her throat coming up, and even once she’s stopped throwing up, stopped dry-heaving, her head spins enough to make her dizzy.

So monster souls are poison to Sunai. Good to know.

Jillian turns, searching for Erin, and sees her, standing now, hands behind her back. Jillian steps forward, palms upward in what she hopes is a soothing gesture.

“ _Sunai_ ,” Erin gasps, and Jillian winces.

“Maybe?”

“Monster.” The venom in Erin’s voice takes Jillian by surprise, hurts her more than it should, and she steps back.

“Can we just talk, please, Er- “

But Erin has lunged forward, and something heavy and iron has hit the side of Jillian’s head, and there’s a starburst of pain, and everything goes _black_.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to yell at me, you can come and find me on [Tumblr](https://ainewrites.tumblr.com/). I exist on Twitter, too, but I mostly talk about books and Wynonna Earp over there.


End file.
